VICTORA: Despite efforts, laws won’t make homeless people disappear

Among the issues Fort Walton Beach city councilmen are expected to take up at their Feb. 11 meeting are the proposed ordinance to require local churches to qualify for permits before opening as cold night shelters and a proposal to hire a consultant who specializes in solving vagrancy issues.

Daily News file photo

By WENDY VICTORA / Daily News

Published: Saturday, March 8, 2014 at 01:45 PM.

When we think of our ideal neighbors, they always have a home.

They mow their lawns, keep their pets confined and raise well-behaved, quiet children. We chat over the mailboxes, pet their dogs, praise their children, help each other out in a crisis.

Nothing about this formula, this set of implied societal expectations, fits when your neighbors are homeless.

Deep down, most of us would admit we don’t want to share our sidewalks, our parks, our property lines with some of the deeply troubled people who call the streets home.

But it’s a problem for which there are no easy solutions. That doesn’t stop municipal and county leaders from trying in ways that are often controversial.

Google “homeless” and “bus tickets” and you’ll get a half-dozen quick hits about cities offering free bus tickets to homeless people — a sort of spend-a-buck-to-pass-the-buck solution.

Closer to home, Pensacola officials recently passed and then repealed a controversial “blanket ban” that made it a crime for the homeless to sleep on public property with a blanket.

And in Fort Walton Beach, a homeless man called police to report a family relaxing at a local park. He said their behavior violated a law against protracted lounging.

The intent of all of these actions is the same: to keep these folks on the move and keep them out of our backyards.

They don’t work.

Rules that limit the movements of a specific segment of the population don’t resolve the fundamental problem, which is that a small segment of our society has trouble playing well with others.

We can put signs on public bathrooms, close our parks and put every business in town on a no-trespassing list, but they will still be here.

They still will be our neighbors, our fellow humanity.

And they serve a purpose in our lives that is sometimes hard to identify or appreciate.

We can’t make them good neighbors.

We can only be the best neighbors possible, and lead by example.

Daily News Interim Editor Wendy Victora can be reached at 315-4478 or wvictora@nwfdailynews.com.

Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published
without permission. Links are encouraged.